Before I forget, I want to thank everyone who so lovingly came together for my friend Erick! I am extremely happy to say that he is doing much, much better and has been released from the hospital. He isn’t through this rough patch yet, but it seems the worst is behind him and his spirit has been lifted for the fights ahead. Thank you all dearly for your thoughts, wishes and prayers. I know it all made a difference.

I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be taking a “vacation” for the next week or so. I’m not going anywhere; in fact, the whole point is for me to stay at home and really, really rest. August was one of the worst health months I’ve had in a long time, including two urgent care visits (very early in the morning) two appointments with my GP, a 5am call to the 24 hour nurse hotline (which led to one of the GP visits but I was worried I needed to to the emergency room) two colds, one ear infection, one thing which I thought was another ear infection and turned out to be allergy-related, countless migraines and almost as many nights of insomnia as nights where I slept. It was just a really hard month.

I had a few photography things I needed to take care of, but as of now, I’m taking a little time off. I’m thinking a week or so, but obviously I can tinker it to fit how I’m feeling. I may not be on social media as much for the next few days and I may or may not post a photo next week. I actually have one ready to go but the posting requires more energy than you’d think, especially if it needs to be promoted in any way. So that’s all to say, I’m going to hunker down and try and stay in bed in my PJs as much as possible for the next week. I may be a little quieter online, but it won’t be forever. 🙂

And that leads me neatly into two other things I’ve been trying to find time to say between all the craziness. One is a guest article I wrote for MESupport.Co.UK. Louise, who runs the site, was very generous with letting me pick the topic I wanted to write about and also being extremely forgiving about how long it took me to actually get the article to her! It was fun to write it once I actually could, and I got to use a story my dad likes to tell about me when I was very little, so give her a read 🙂

I was discussing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge with @RidgeBackRogue, who also has ME, a few weeks ago and wondered out loud what we could do for ME that would be similar. One of the problems with the Ice Bucket Challenge is that people with severe ME would never be able to do it; they can barely tolerate light, let alone ice-cold water. It would be uncomfortable and a little harmful even for me, and I’m just moderate. We wanted it to be something that anyone of nearly any health level could do.

She immediately came up with a great idea: The ME Movie and Chocolate Challenge! Guess how it works. Within 1 week of being challenged, you must watch any movie of your liking while eating something with chocolate! We’re pretty forgiving here, so if you don’t care for chocolate, you could substitute whatever you like best. Then you donate the average price of a movie ticket to an ME charity – I like the Microbe Discovery Project for the US and RidgeBackRogue suggests Invest In ME for UK residents!

And while those with the most, most severe form of ME still wouldn’t be able to participate, the poor souls, this is accessible to people of a wider range of the health spectrum.

So that’s it! I’ll be doing my ME Movie and Chocolate Challenge over the next week… what should I watch? If I had to pick right now, I’d probably go with Cloud Atlas, The Green Mile or In Bruges… or just a bunch of episodes of Breaking Bad, True Detective or Rectify; enough to make up a movie’s-length of time. I don’t see how I can go wrong with any of those choices!

Would anyone like to volunteer to be next? Extra karma points to you if you do 🙂

In Between Awake And Asleep – this is what I plan on doing for the next week; magically hovering over the bed. Or maybe I’ll deign to actually lay in bed. With PJs that are actually comfortable. And sleep. That all sounds better.